Now that Zynga, the behemoth, is supposed to be worth 4 billion, and like every human with net access is playing Farmville, I noticed that Namco Bandai and Square Enix are making tentative forays into the Facebook game arena.

About 3 seconds after I got finished giggling with girlish glee, I thought OMG they should totally do a MR game on Facebook.

That would be a great idea...

Never hear of this farmville thing. And I don't even have facebook. And uh, what's Zynga, the behemoth, and it's worth 4 billion? I'm so lost. =(

Zynga is a game company that made a hugely successful browser-based game called "Farmville" for facebook. I've never played it personally, since I don't do the whole facebook thing, but there's no denying the game (and the platform, facebook) is very popular.

Also, if you've ever played any of the FB games, you'd know instantly what a perfect fit Monster Rancher would be. Just about every game on facebook has a little bit of "raising" a character, PvP fighting, and even inventory/equipment/location management of the sort that goes on in many of the MR games.

Also, I don't think anyone has thought to use their games to market existing IP. For instance, you build a MR game, and you can easily pimp the next, say, console iteration, or publicize the next unrelated company release, etc.--Zynga does this to cross-promote their own games, but nobody seems to do it (yet) to promote their non-facebook games.

Especially for a niche game like MR, it seems a perfect fit. Also, the FB market seems to favor casual or non-traditional titles--"girly" farming/pet games, rather than your h4rdc0r3 shooters and whatnot, so it may be possible to reach a flood of people who'd love to be playing MR games but are outside of the usual gaming crowds. (Also, the "facebook" console is free, and isn't going to require grandma to learn something outside her computer skills to feel comfortable, for instance, raising her supah cute Suezo.)

Anyway, I think it could be a great way to keep the IP alive and grow the fanbase.

MR would be a natural choice for it, but it'd probably badly cannibalize any new game audiences. I just want more MR collectibles at this point, too. So far we've really just had those tiny figurines and UFO machine plushies.